


What if I told you I loved you anyway

by rabble_dabble_writes



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, TommyInnit-centric (Video Blogging RPF), god dammit, in-universe, is every story i write gonna be one that personally relates to me so much, just kinda follows tommy and his life, no beta we die like jack manifold and his already three canon lives but he came back from hell, not RL of course, really tommy needs therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29767392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabble_dabble_writes/pseuds/rabble_dabble_writes
Summary: He couldn’t count how many times he’s been named, later, in moments he couldn’t think of or times that make him breathe oddly where Tubbo has to help him remember he is in the present, not in the past. It’s because everything seems so perfect, everything seems so great, everything seems okay, and then he is many more words of annoying and so many layers of memory and the type of pain that never seems to get better. It burns, like tears, it hurts, like Wilbur’s hand clenching too tightly on his arm, it stings with pain, and suddenly words were etched onto his skin and grafted onto his soul like it was a hot branding of something with shame. He turns out to be Tommy, and Tommy with so many descriptive adjectives, and the world burns in pain that loved to linger.
Relationships: Sam | Awesamdude & TommyInnit, Tommyinnit & Tubbo, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 77





	What if I told you I loved you anyway

The first time Tommy is told that he is annoying is when he is four years old, and he is on the playgrounds that the village allows all the little ones to play and mess around in without disrupting the daily work of the adults. 

The village is new, as are the people, as are the kids that hang around the streets and the ones that you wouldn’t want to see once the sun hit the horizon line. The kind that you wonder what they do between the time night hits and they appear home, and where you don’t want to find out. Tommy is new - he won’t remember, years from now, about the fact he had no place of origin to recall or the warm, calloused hands that led him here (and left him here) in the first place. He won’t recall much of anything, except the tiniest glimpses of feelings from when Wilbur and Philza would later find him and lead him home. All he will remember of this time is the brightness of the day, and the laughter of the other children, whom he would bear just the tiniest amounts of jealousy for. 

In his memory, the day is bright and hazy, almost cheerfully inert. The adults are busy and worn, encouraging the younger ones and those in school alike towards the field of grass meant for tiny legs and hands to tottle and run upon. The meadow is big, and big kids are scary, but here every little child knows it's all meant for fun and play. Tommy is entranced, from the screams of the other kids, from the gleeful excitement that rise through the older teens - they have a ball, brand new and shiny and oh so kickable, and Tommy hears them say ‘play’ and hears them say ‘game’ and his only thought is that  _ he wants in. _

But he is like the other younger ones who scream wistfully to play alongside the bigger kids; he is faceless, non-memorable to these children and teens that have the actual capability of understanding how to play games fairly (or at least without tearing up). He whines childishly, alongside a few others that have been seen too young to play, at one of the older teens that happen to be standing next to the person holding the ball. The older kids are in charge, because this is how the hierarchy of the world goes - they are older, and more powerful than Tommy’s four-year-old fists can hurt, so they are at the top of this game-making power change. The eldest teens know this, with their friend that holds the ball, and this is why they get to choose the teams. The boy that Tommy whines at doesn’t catch him at first, his gaze washing over the children, as others choose their contenders in teams, and the older teen's eyes don’t clear from the glaze that covers his eyes over in boredom. 

Tommy makes his presence known, though, because even older he would be Tommy, brash and loud and with the need to be known. Tommy pushes forward with glee, hope, but he is pushed back by the teen, dismissed in that kid way. Unseen.

This upsets him further, obviously. Tommy  _ wants  _ to play, and it’s obviously very stupid of this older kid to say  _ no. _ He tries to push forward again, but the teen-

“Geez kid,” he tells Tommy in a rude, stark tone. “Don’t you have anywhere else to be  _ that _ annoying?”

But Tommy is only four. He understands slightly about the warning that the tone holds, but he doesn’t understand why the very last word is laced heavily with something he’s never heard before in his short life. He bemoans like the other little children when they’re told to leave harshly or stand and watch, and the words from the older boy are forgotten by that very afternoon. 

Still, perhaps if he remembered, he might have wondered whether or not that boy would’ve still chosen that word, had he been shown Tommy’s life from there.

* * *

The next time he hears and  _ remembers _ the word, it is said fondly.

He still doesn’t trust Wilbur, nor Phil by any great stretch either. The most likable thing in the wooden home that he trusts and enjoys is the old pooch that Phil had gotten when Wilbur had been young, as a gift years ago, and Tommy is ecstatic for a seven-year-old to be loved (slobbered) on by the dog first and foremost before any other individual in the house. He avoids the farther rooms and the sounds of laughter - he can’t help but feel crowded, in a sense, when both of them (or heaven forbid any of Philza or Wilbur’s friends) are all gathered in the room with him. But the _ dog, _ the so sweet, so lovable gray-haring dog that trots around at Tommy’s feet when he leaves his room in the middle of the night when no one else is around to stop him from taking food and storing it under his bed-

Tommy knows of a few things in the world: any food source he’s aware of he’ll steal from and store away, if he is ever in any trouble the first thing to do is smile and pretend he is not, and he would  _ absolutely _ do about any thing, including lots of crime, for the very lovable and old dog. 

But even though he loves the dog, the dog is very much not Tommy’s dog, and it’s very apparent when Wilbur calls for the pooch and it beckons. 

Apparently, though, Wilbur is jealous of Tommy. Tommy knows this because he recognizes the way that teen boys give that furrowed glare, stating their unhappiness at something particular, and Tommy by this age is no stranger to being a source of irritation. 

He is absolutely a master of ignoring it, though. The dog is its own dog. 

The fondness, though- it’s different from the older man Philza. Philza is patient, if a bit distant; Wilbur is more...

...emotional? At least, where Tommy is concerned. 

The fondness is what Tommy isn’t familiar with, when Phil tells Tommy through the door that he’s left dinner on the table but Tommy opens his door and the plate of chicken is sitting right there. It surely isn’t familiar when Tommy warms his hands near the lingering embers of the firepit, quiet and believing that no one else is around, when he opens his eyes the next morning because  _ oops _ he fell asleep next to the dying fire last night but he’s covered in thick, wool blankets that Tommy vaguely remembers is only in the favorite colour of Wilbur’s. And it  _ definitely _ isn’t familiar when Tommy brings himself into the house with scraps and cuts on his face and hands (stupid nearby forests and their stupid wild creatures) paranoid of Philza’s soon-to-be sure anger, but gets met with a Wilbur that has some medical things stored under his bed (don’t tell Phil) and a cautionary warning to “be more careful, idiot!”

It’s..nice, Tommy thinks, which is surprising, because things, like finding abandoned toys or discovering a pond full of fish or looking at stealable valuables, are nice, not things like an older brother figure who screeches about Tommy hurting himself too much or a supposed father figure who places a cake nonchalantly in front of the two kids when there is no apparent occasion to celebrate anything other than the fact they live with him. Things that were starting to fill the memory spots in his brain were not things like important landmarks or the days where a food vendor be distracted, but where Wilbur took him fishing and they grabbed enough fish to fill a barrel he believes, and when they came back home to a wide-smiling Philza, and Tommy knows he thinks it's nice but he doesn’t quite know, or understand, how or  _ why  _ he came to such a conclusion. 

Very odd, he thinks. In all his seven years, and it’s very odd. 

And very sad, too, when the old dog goes; Tommy’s learned the lesson of not getting attached too many times, but he can still remember holding a baby bird for the first time, and the first gray-spotted cat that liked to trail him alongside the dirt path and purr at him, and he is only seven years old but he is oh so sad (as he is for all the creatures that would ever pass by him) at his first permanent knowing of the death of a pet he loved. 

He is sad and quiet that he stays in the room Philza lets him call his own, and only comes out when that fondness (that fondness, again, somehow) appears in excited yips and yaps and Wilbur is standing in the doorway as the new black-fur puppy licks Tommy’s nose and makes him giggle. Tommy cries- wait, no he doesn’t because Tommy doesn’t cry, he  _ shrieks _ in giggles and the excitement of the new puppy alongside the little barks that fill the room. 

“Look at you, annoying little gremlins,” Wilbur says, and he says fondly, Tommy would recall. Fondly, and like he did not  _ mind  _ being fond of him. “Now I’ll  _ never  _ get peace and quiet.”

It would occur to Tommy, later, that Philza was just as surprised as Tommy to see the new little pup when he came home. But younger Tommy hadn’t stopped to think about that, to think about anything other than the occurrence of the new dog. It would only be the memories, and the laughter, and the way Wilbur’s frown curled up too much for him to ever be properly angry about the new noise level at home.

* * *

And sure, plenty of people would later tell him plenty of things in many tones, more negative and cruel, and one of them would be  _ annoying. _ Tommy, since his former prime days, just knew he was known as passionate and cruel and loud and abrasive and many, many synonyms that either Wilbur or bullies of boys or that mean old lady down the road would yell at him. It never meant anything more, though, not to him. Tommy’s words weren’t meant to be sharp or double-meaning or extend into a wondrous vocabulary; as long as his words got the job done, and he had said what he meant, he would get his way (in his mind). 

But growing up does something to a person, when they change, when they think and feel and  _ understand. _ Growing up does something to the Tommy’s of the world, enough to prompt change and make him think, and Tommy could remember the fair amount of times someone did do something-  _ say _ something to get at him.

Tubbo, although sweet, is the example he’d think of.

Wilbur is like Phil in many ways, except when he is better - when he sneaks Tommy a cupcake after being grounded and excluded, when he lets Tommy tag along on the adventures that grow longer (and more desperate, Tommy would remember later), when he adopts a strange, small boy from a box on the side of the road and doesn’t complain when he and the boy both use Wilbur as a pillow at night. Phil is strong, Tommy knows, but Wilbur seems unimaginably  _ stronger _ in a way he’s desperate to follow. 

Tommy’s not as charming with words, though, not like Wilbur. Tubbo picks up on it, somehow, and when he wants to he can be colourfully masterful in stories or ideas or arguments.

Or hurtful, hurtful insults. Even if they’re in the heat of the moment, just messy and tangible and crafted together like Tubbo’s handwriting. They can make people cry.

Tommy cries, when he is ten. He isn’t very proud of it, as all young children aren’t, but it’s one of the few times he let the tears fall and let the sobs rack his shoulders. He’s sat on a boulder protruding from the dirt, having run away when Tubbo hit all the wrong places in Tommy’s heart with the right weapons, and something precious about having the word ‘annoying’ in a twisted tone that Tubbo learned from Wilbur recently (because Tubbo has to be good at that, too, besides impressing Wilbur already) stung like a bee sting and he cries on a stupid rock in the middle of a forest that he has no direction in. 

It’s those times Tommy would only faintly recall when he had been young and alone. There had been no Wilbur’s to impress or Tubbo’s to be jealous of when he wasn’t the Tommy that they both knew, when the instinct of his world was to just survive and be a faceless boy with the other hated or abandoned children. Being called names did not hurt when the only connection to others was the fact that they were all left to the will of the world, forgotten and forgone, and mischief or schemes were about food or wonders in a windowsill. They had not been about music, or family, or this horridness in Tommy’s chest that squeezed a lot alongside his tears and Wilbur told him it was called love. 

The word had been nothing, and then Wilbur had changed it into something, but now Tubbo seemed to change it into something darker than what Tommy knew Wilbur meant for it. 

So he cried, then, because changing your understanding of something was scary, and being purposefully hurt against in the soul  _ also _ hurt. 

Insults used to mean nothing, had meant nothing, in the old world of Tommy. But now this new one made it hurt quite a lot, and Tommy didn’t quite understand it, nor does he have the wish for it. 

It’s when he’s stifling his sniffles that Wilbur finds him. He doesn’t look up but he doesn’t wipe at his red eyes. Wilbur rewards his bravery with a scolding and then a very tender hug, in that close brotherly way, telling him that “Tubbo didn’t quite mean what he said, sometimes people say things they don’t  _ mean _ and are very sorry for-” before the quietness kills any heart-wrenching speech Wilbur had prepared and they just sit in an embrace on the ground that’s beginning to really hurt Tommy’s butt for sitting on so long. 

“Am I annoying?” Tommy asks, which is his only first double-meaning sentence meant to say  _ Do you even want a person like me around? _

And of course Wilbur goes, warmly and in a low voice, “The most annoying person I know,” which is the answer of  _ Yes, yes I do, absolutely. _

If only it had stayed, Tommy would think later. If only it remained true.

They went back to their little camp, eventually, where Tommy could see Tubbo moping and mumbling and sad. It’s the origin for clinginess, the prompting of forgiveness of everything - see, Tubbo was cunning and bright and energetic, much like Tommy, and held his own ground in arguments, but the moment it was all over he was sad and regretful and thought too much in a way that he explained to Tommy that felt like the world was overwhelmingly against him. Tubbo feels bad, because of course Tubbo does, and Tommy knows his best friend loves him a lot (and that he can be a little much, Tommy admits) so when he curls up too closely that night on their camping grounds and goes, “Tommy…” all Tommy wants to do is maybe punch his shoulder and pull him into a hug. 

And Tubbo would let him do it, Tommy knows, but he does the un-Tommyish thing and just listens first. 

“‘M sorry. Didn’t mean to say all those things. You just got me all mad but you...I shouldn’t’ve said some stuff.”

Tommy lets himself have a moment, lets himself listen to the crickets that chirp softly nearby and the fake-snoring that Wilbur lets echo in the night because Tommy knows he’s always liked drama and soft moments. 

“Said some not-so-nice-things myself, Tubzo,” Tommy’s voice warbles with a sniff. “Maybe I deserved some of it.”

“Maybe you did,” Tubbo replies, but not maliciously. Tommy understands it’s in the same way that Wilbur says it, where he spouts name-insults but he looks at Tommy all soft and like he’s about to change the world. It’s like a secret language, where only Tommy and he understand what the true meaning behind it is.

“Do you think-think that I’m annoying?” Tommy asks him, because now he knows the same words can mean something different to different people, learns that the hard way and quickly, and he’s a bit afraid at how much he can compare Tubbo to the boys from his faint childhood memories.

But Tommy should’ve known better, because Tubbo goes with a small smile, “Hm, only a little bit.”

And  _ that  _ is when Tommy punches Tubbo in the shoulder, but it’s okay because Tubbo laughs loud enough where Tommy has to shush him and pretend that Wilbur isn’t chortling with his back to them. 

“Not in a bad way!!” Tubbo explains in a harsh whisper. “In, like, a funny nice way.”

“In a funny nice way? What’s that supposed to mean??”

“Like funny,” Tubbo explains. “Or nice.”

“Why don’t you just call me funny, then,” Tommy prompts. “Or nice.”

“Because if Wilbur hears me inflating your ego any more, he might kill me.” 

“That’s it-!” 

And they are laughing, laughing into the night, the memory of Wilbur telling them off with a smile and the restlessness of being loud in the empty forest that lingers in every hint of conversation Tommy can recall from that night forward. The odd thing is that Tommy will always replay that memory in his head on the good days where he can see the clearness of it and feel better, and on the bad when he wonders where the thoughts of that night left to go. 

  
That is another version of him, encaptured in a memory that had no way of knowing any better. The word  _ annoying  _ had been empty and then mended with love and then broken, just a little, with hurt - but love and hurt it only had been. Sometimes, Tommy thinks, if only it had stayed that way.

* * *

He couldn’t count how many times he’s been named, later, in moments he couldn’t think of or times that make him breathe oddly where Tubbo has to help him remember he is in the present, not in the past. It’s because everything seems so perfect, everything seems so great, everything seems okay, and then he is many more words of annoying and so many layers of memory and the type of pain that never seems to get better. It burns, like tears, it hurts, like Wilbur’s hand clenching too tightly on his arm, it stings with pain, and suddenly words were etched onto his skin and grafted onto his soul like it was a hot branding of something with shame. He turns out to be Tommy, and Tommy with so many descriptive adjectives, and the world burns in pain that loved to linger. 

Because the good memory of Wilbur clashes often, as the love for someone who changes too much does, and Tommy can recall being called ‘annoying’ with no love or fondness Wilbur used to give so freely in a ravine that echoed terror. It stings with Technoblade, as well, because it feels like Techno is attempting to use a title that he did not earn and is not using correctly - actions say more than words for the warrior, but this word means so much and the monotone cover feels aching and wrong. Eret, Tommy learns to tune out, Quackity feels more like a joke but in an awkward, uncomfortable way, Tubbo grows old of it, somehow, of the boyhood and jokes and the fondness he used to copy Wilbur of, and Philza-

There is a part of Wilbur that whispers to him, an old memory, that goes with a bit of a maliced tone,  _ “Who cares what he thinks, Tommy, it doesn’t matter but only if you let it.” _

Tommy lets it. 

Tommy lets it, because he’s passionate, emotionally-driven Tommy. It hurts and it stings and it echoes  _ love love love  _ but even though it whispers of those other times, he still doesn’t find it, not even when searching for the darkest shadows for it. 

He lets it, but only because he had let it for so long, and then it turns twisted and dark and echoes not love, no, not fondness, but  _ pain pain pain- _

Tommy cries, because there had been an intended definition for the word  _ annoying _ and it is clear that everyone thinks Tommy defines it. And because they think that words can only mean what they do on the surface, that they can turn words sharp and pointed and like weapons (like Tubbo used to mistakefully do) and because they do not understand whispering or affection or the tenderness of it, they sting Tommy with the intended meaning over and over again. 

“Go away, Tommy,” Phil nearly growls at him in grief. “You’re being annoying.”

Tommy had gone, then, to see the body, but he obeyed; and he always wishes that he hadn’t, because then he is exiled, and then he never sees any other memory, nothing besides the brotherly, loving figure he had known for all his life unreachable and killed, and when Tommy comes back he doesn’t ever have the heart to go see if Phil ever left the body and blood there and whether or not he’d come to a caved cavern of rubble and pain and a decomposed body (or if he would be standing there, arms open, ready to call him an affectionate name with a smile or whether he’d be proud of him and all the things he managed to do despite his attempt to take his creation and Tommy with him.) 

* * *

The quietness is welcome, overwhelming, preferably against the sound of explosion or echoes. But the quietness also lets in the echoes of memories and whispers - Tommy begins to dwell on the bad rather than the good, to grief and grim and miserably hated ways that someone would say it. To have all the voices echo with people whom he used to cherish and love, it hurts, so much-

The tent reminds him of the time before the SMP, when they found Tubbo and they were helping Wilbur to search. The fires he builds never warm him quick enough, and are quickly destroyed before he ever gets the chance to stay and attempt to get his clothes dry; he is too wordlessly unnerved to attempt to stay in the home the ghost made, as empty as it may be. The holes he stumbles over and the paths only he walks make him incredibly sad, for some indescribable reason, and he begins to think of himself as annoying. 

But not like Wilbur had said it. Annoying, when the thoughts cave in and the ocean (of water or lava) makes him think long and hard. Annoying, when he fights back and loses and learns, possibly, learns that the world does not want him and it had never wanted him and it will never want him (again). Annoying, he thinks, he believes, the word soaks in his skin and in his eyes and on his heart, carved in swirls and cursive and blocky letters and perfect, unperfect penmanship, and he is carved over every place with the word. He begins to see it in the eyes of Ranboo, quiet and flickering, and in the eyes of Phil the one time he visited, and in the echoing laugh of Techno as he had walked away from the pitiful makeshift campsite Tommy declared his. Annoying, when a new friend arrives and Tommy costs him his life, and annoying when he asks  _ May I please go home _ and he is told no, and annoying when the Christmas tree appears and Tommy never even saw who put it up (even though every year, with Wilbur, he had put up a tree, even in Pogtopia, there had been a tree, because he loved putting up the decorations) and the voice in his head, different from the rest (Tommy later comes to realize it is his own) calls him stupid, calls him ignorant, calls him  _ annoying. _

_ You are annoying, you know that? _

_ Yes, yes I do. Everyone’s told me.  _

_ God, you’re annoying. _

_ Yes, yes I know. Everyone’s said. _

_ Can’t you be anything but? _

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being annoying.  _

And Dream says that it’s okay, and that he forgives him. 

“An  _ annoying  _ little pest.”

And Dream says that it’s not his time to go yet. 

“A thorn in my side, a problem that I have to get rid of, because you just like to be an  _ annoying _ presence in my world-”

And Dream says-

_ Maybe,  _ Tommy thinks, up on top of the world.  _ I am allowed to be annoying. _

_ Maybe,  _ Tommy swims, for air, leaving behind dirt and grime and the hollow, doomed hole that is this exiled paradise-prison.  _ I am allowed to be as annoying as I want to be. _

_ Maybe,  _ Tommy walks through the snow, being cut by the cold, but the shape of the house in the distance keeps him walking and his only mindset is back to how it used to be, with survival, with himself against the world.  _ I will be what they say, and I will be annoying. _

Maybe is such a powerful word. Powerful, but not binding. Technoblade thinks of loyalty, but Tommy’s loyalty lies in memories and dead friendships and the person he is _ was _ used to be- still  _ can  _ be. 

To the ideals that his brother used to preach, used to teach in songs or in a smile, in poems that Tommy used to tuck in a backpack that’s long since been abandoned in a land that Tommy can’t remember. 

To the future that he should be able to live for - he crawled from hell and back for Wilbur’s, and he was manipulated to try to do the same for Dream, and Techno almost doomed him to the same fate - it is his right that he gets to carve and shape his own path for once. 

To the title he wants; Wilbur called him a wanna-be, Technoblade called him Theseus, Dream called him a hero. 

He’s fucking  _ Tommy,  _ thank-you-very-much. He is young and he is brash and he is full of potential and bittersweet memories. 

And he  _ knows _ he’s annoying, he knows. 

But perhaps, for once, he can learn to be proud of it, or at least be proud of himself.

Wilbur’s proud, loving tone echoes in his mind when he and Tubbo sail off in a boat, together, finally, at last once again, and the tears fall. He has to plead with Tubbo more than once to say all that he might, for the fact that they might never get to again (which almost, almost comes close to being true). He remembers and tells Tubbo about the home he and Wilbur grew up in, when Phil had been home and cautious yet determined to make a son of him, a brother of Wilbur. He remembers a dog, faintly, because he mixes up the old one and the one he had before they left and wonders whether or not Phil took good care of it. Tubbo tells him of the nights L’manburg was pretty and Schlatt was too drunk to stop any of them from having a little bit of fun. He tells Tommy that he might remember something about his life before he and Wilbur, but that he doesn’t quite know if he wants to go search for it. They both stumble across the memory of their argument, the bad one, together, before laughing as the boat passes land and glides across a timid, patient ocean. 

The world took away so much. Dream and others had taken away their childhoods, although the blame lies in lots of the older beings whom let so much of it go. Tommy wonders, briefly, what their childhoods must’ve been like, must’ve turned out, if the other people of the SMP were so pitifully vicious. 

_ No, their past does not make them who they chose to be now, _ Tommy thinks with such a heavily-laced Wilbur tone, but no, Wilbur had never quite told him that.  _ Influenced, yes. But it is all on their own.  _

He swears to Tubbo that he, if only by this final fight, will make his world better. Tubbo smiles, widely, a mirror of the boy he used to be but different  _ but still with fondness,  _ says, “And I’ll be with you!”

Tommy is sixteen, when the world stills, when his best friend almost dies for him, when the others all come through and save a piece of Tommy’s soul in the shape of a Tubbo. Dream gets cornered. Dream gets killed, twice, and is put on his very last life. Tommy feels the rage, feels the burn, feels the hurting and the shame and the pain he was made to feel in exile and the way that he feels right now and he understands that will never quite leave him, at least not for a long time. 

Dream- well, he begs, and Tommy is surprised to feel, well,  _ annoyed  _ at the thought the green blob does so. 

He clearly did not, as much as he’d boast to Tommy about it, actually understand who Tommy is. Tommy is the boy Phil let thrive in a safe home and Wilbur held such a fondness for. He is the force that met Tubbo and bound their souls together with friendship and care; the force that led alongside the nation Wilbur built and that he saw through its destruction, and the pain that followed. He looked up to Technoblade and guided Quackity to the rebellion and led the forces against Dream time and time again, built his home out of dirt and built his memories out of sweat and blood and built a respected land that again and again would protect future settlers of the SMP. He had risen, again and again, screaming and loud and-

_ Annoying. _

His feet move with the discs in hand, through the nether, through the hub, through the land he had been exiled from. The bench still holds his weight and the jukebox still plays Cat and Mellohi in the same tune it had in the beginning. Tubbo and him watch the day break, together, tired and bloody and cold from the whipping wind. 

_ Gremlin. Brat. Annoying.  _

The whipping wind turns to something familiar, that Tommy had always missed, that he is always going to miss forever. 

_ I’m proud of you, Tommy. _

Sure, he might’ve said he had let the tears fall then, suddenly and overwhelming. But, although he’d never admit to it and he  _ swore _ Tubbo to secrecy, maybe he had felt the tears beforehand when this imprint, echoing form of the Wilbur Soot Tommy  _ knew _ had bickered with him like Tommy had done something childishly bad, like steal his chips, or break one of his guitar strings.

Words held so much meaning. He could hear Wilbur’s tone attempting to remain in that bickering form, quaking to let it flow through the mess that is language. 

_ See you later, Tommy. _

He had so many names. Wilbur had defined all of them to him, once, and then everyone else tried to too. He is lucky, to have had Wilbur - he doesn’t know what he would’ve done if he had learned it any different, if he had learned of the cold and the hurt before the love. And although that time had long since past, and many tried to redefine these things into worser meanings, he is finally defining these words for something into himself, into something better. Something for the future.

Tubbo only calls him annoying if they can see each other or with a sarcastic tone, eyes always light to indicate to Tommy about the joke. Sam lets Tommy speak for him, although he never makes Tommy feel bad for it, nor does he let Tommy linger in the bad thoughts. Ghostbur has disappeared, but it didn’t feel too bad, and Tommy would remember him. 

It didn’t have to be special from anybody else, although Tommy would forever appreciate it. He knew what the word meant, and had for a long, long time. 

And maybe he is okay with it now, to call it only to himself. 

_ I love you.  _

**Author's Note:**

> and to all the people who have ever been teased, yelled, or called annoying for being themselves: I love you. this is for you. i love you.


End file.
